Craig Stritar

Since being introduced to lean over a decade ago, Craig Stritar has been working in industries ranging from healthcare to production and distribution; at one point even leaving the safety of land to introduce “lean at sea” on an Alaskan factory trawler. Like many other practitioners, for the past several years, Craig has focused almost exclusively on organizational cultural transformation through daily learning cycles (Toyota Kata and TWI). He is presently the Director of Operations Improvement at Meritus Health in western Maryland.

After executing a plan to incorporate kata into his organization's daily routines, Craig Stritar was surprised to find that nobody had followed through on their learnings. This is the story of his investigation into the problem, plus the countermeasures to what he identified as the root cause. Read more to learn how you can use it to sustain your kata efforts too. More »

After realizing that that their five-year track record of continuous improvement was leveling out, Craig Stritar and his team knew they would have to get creative. Find out the methods they used to fight their way off the "lean plateau. " More »

In one memorable lean project, Craig Stritar found himself on a large fish-processing vessel in the Bering Sea that was plagued by poor productivity levels. The supervisors insisted that inadequate staffing was the problem - Craig begged to differ. His transformation would require a specialized approach, in which he would not be able to use any lean terminology. Find out how he did it. More »